Citizens for Global Solutions

PEACE AND SECURITY | Darfur Crisis

Background

The conflict began in early 2003 when rebel groups in Darfur began attacking government targets, claiming that the region was being neglected by the government in Sudan's capital, Khartoum.

Since then, the government of Sudan has launched several aerial bombardment campaigns and helicopter gunship attacks in Darfur. It also has sponsored and encouraged horseback attacks by nomadic Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.

The Janjaweed routinely raid villages, execute adult males, rape adult women and girl children, nail survivors to trees with iron spikes, burn homes and crops, steal livestock, and kidnap children into slavery. Over the course of the last two and a half years, it is estimated that a campaign of ethnic cleansing has killed nearly 400,000 people in the Darfur region of Sudan. As many as 500 people continue to die each day.

These horrendous acts have helped depopulate a region as large as Texas: more than 200,000 refugees have been registered in neighboring Chad and more than 2 million people are internally displaced in Sudan itself.

In September 2004, the United States concluded an independent investigation and regards the events in Darfur as genocide. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry, appointed by the UN Secretary General to investigate the crisis in Darfur reported last January that the Sudanese Government and the Janjaweed militias were responsible for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

Note: The conflict in Darfur should not be confused with the civil war that has been fought between North and South Sudan for over two decades. Last January, representatives from the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed an agreement to end the 21-year old civil war. A UN peacekeeping force has been established to maintain the ceasefire.

African Union Mission – Current Situation

Currently, the African Union has about 7,700 personnel deployed in Darfur to oversee the ceasefire and protect the monitoring force on the ground. Their mandate does not extend to the protection of civilians whose lives are in constant danger; AU troops can only protect civilians from imminent threats during accidental "encounters.”

Citizens for Global Solutions, and other foreign policy leaders, recommend that the African Union forces be incorporated into a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Peace Talks on Darfur

Peace talks have been ongoing between the two main rebel groups - the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) - and the Sudanese government for several months. Unfortunately, neither side has reached an agreement to stop the violence in Darfur.

On August 1, 2005, Sudanese Vice President and former rebel leader John Garang was killed in a helicopter crash as he was returning from Uganda. His death came just weeks after becoming Vice President. This threw the peace talks between the Sudanese government and the rebel groups into further turmoil.

Recently, the two groups (SLM and JEM) announced that they will combine their military forces and other activities under the new banner “Allied Revolutionary Forces of Western Sudan.” It remains to be seen whether this new development will help move the peace talks forward in the next few months.

Updated January 24, 2006

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